


Fair and Square

by Canon_Is_Relative



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Genre: Lando POV, M/M, Millenium Falcon, Missing Scene, Multi, Spoilers, pansexual characters, posting for posterity, solo movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 14:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14750321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative
Summary: People think it’s nothing to hand over a starship you lost in a card game. Happens all the time, especially in joints like this. Fair and square, here you are then, all gassed up and ready to go.People are morons.





	Fair and Square

**Author's Note:**

> 100% credit for the line “Wookiees don’t mate with outworlders” goes to ambiguously who wrote my [all time favorite Star Wars fic series.](https://archiveofourown.org/series/382345)
> 
> This is not edited or beta-read and may change once I’ve seen the movie again five or six times and get a better handle on my feelings but for now it’s open season on opening night. Xxxxx

People think it’s nothing to hand over a starship you lost in a card game. Happens all the time, especially in joints like this. Fair and square, here you are then, all gassed up and ready to go. 

People are morons. 

The rules for what constitutes a fair wager vary from sector to sector, planet to planet, gambling den to gambling den. He’s put his ship on the line plenty of times and never lost her and he doesn’t plan on starting today.

“Run this by me again,” the smart-mouth says as they’re standing outside the door, waiting to be admitted. “You lost your ship fair and square, to me, and you’re not handing over the keys because...?”

“Because....” Lando runs his fingers down the brocade edge of his cape, noting the spot where Grignak’s goon got him with that big fucking knife in the early hours of the morning, realizes that that was actually yesterday morning, and spares a second for a fervent prayer to whoever’s listening that they can keep this short and he can get back to his bunk for some sleep before he keels over. 

“Because?” Han prompts.

“ _Because_ the Falcon wasn’t registered as collateral when I checked in to the casino and Maz runs a very tight ship.”

“Maz? Who’s Maz?”

Lando scoffs, but the derision is all for himself. He couldn’t believe he’d once thought this wannabe’s naïveté was cute. “She’s queen of this world, kid, and if you didn’t know that coming in, believe me, you’d best let me do the talking.” Lando looks over at Han and sighs. “She’s an acquired taste, that’s all I mean. I’m not going to screw you over.”

“Oh, well, now I’m disappointed.” Han’s quiet murmur was almost lost in Chewie’s growl and Lando’s caught gaping at him when the door to Maz’s audience chamber finally opens.

—

Maz _was_ an acquired taste. Lando hadn’t been lying about that. But neither had he invented that line; Jeng, the smuggler who’d introduced him to Maz had used it on him just as he’d used it on Han. Lando had never gambled on living through the day the tables turned: the day Maz took to the stranger he brought before her the way she’d taken to him, ten years ago, and favored his claim above the smug bastard who’d introduced Lando as the upstart thief who thought he could cheat at Sabacc and get away with it. 

“Drink,” she said, from the arbiter’s seat at the small table, Han and Lando sitting opposite each other with two tiny, ugly little mugs and a large ornate amphora between them. “Drink. So often your kind drinks for oblivion but here you drink for clarity. You drink to understand what the other has lost. Lando,” she turned to him, her eyes soft and kind, but he could only see them for a moment before understanding turned the universe sideways.

“No. No,” he struggled to stand, but her extended hand stopped him as though he’d been paralyzed. He’d been on the other side of the table ten years ago, watching Jeng react just as he was doing now.

“Lando.” She said his name again and he gave one last mighty effort at resisting her and then fell quiet, his body acquiescing at last to a bone-deep need for rest. Maz unfastened her goggles and looked at him with her naked eyes, which seemed both aged and ageless and far more...relatable, that was as good a word as any, than he’d ever seen them before. “Lando. My child. I’ve seen you gamble against that ship a dozen times. What’s different, this time?”

He couldn’t focus past the tears in his eyes, the phantom grip around his heart. “I can’t let her go.” He choked on an inhale and pressed both fists against his eyes, drowning. “She trusted — and I fai — I can’t let her go.”

He was aware of a rise and fall of murmur and breath across from him; Han and the Wookiee exchanging a look and a comment and wishing they were anywhere else, probably. He registered it all on a very basic level but couldn’t really bring himself to care. 

“My child,” Maz said again, her vice gentle but completely lacking in pity or disdain. “You and L3-37 were on different paths. They converged, for awhile, and perhaps you mistook that for a common goal and common understanding, but you must not mistake the sacrifice that L3 made.”

“But I want her back,” Lando managed at last, voice quavering but not breaking. 

“The very fact that you impose your antiquated notions of gender onto a self-made being — self-made, no less, out of parts that _your kind_ discarded as worthless, tells me that you are not worthy of...’her’.” 

Maz’s reprimand had started out sharp enough to sting and ended up sounding as weary as Lando felt. He lowered his head to rest on his folded arms as he heard Maz stand. He listened to Han bluster and protest as Maz lured Chewbacca away with promises he didn’t want to think about while asserting that they ought to ‘leave the humans to sort themselves out.’

The room was quiet for a minute or more, Lando lost track of time, before the sound of porcelain on wood roused him and Han was saying, “This ain’t bad, honestly. Try it.”

The little lopsided mug had come to a rest just beside his elbow, and Lando spared a thought that Han must be one hell of a shufflepuck player before he lifted it to his lips and downed it in one gulp.

The drink was nothing like he’d expected. It went down cool as spring water and tasted of fresh mint and honey behind the sting but didn’t leave him gasping and reciting his mother’s Goddess Lineage to keep his eyes from watering. 

“I know, right?” Han’s eyes had crinkled up at the corners and he was holding out the amphora, offering more. Lando held out his mug.

—

“Friend,” Lando says, because around the blurring of his vision he knows this word to be true. “Friend, I’ve fucked my way from one side of this galaxy to the other and I went and fell in love with a droid. There’s nothing you can say that—“

“Did you ever fuck a Wookiee?”

“Friend,” Lando says again, and hears in his voice an echo of that patient tone that Maz had so recently turned on him. He looks around and reminds himself that they are back in the Falcon, hefts the bottle of Correlian brandy and reminds himself that whatever effects the drink Maz had given them has long since surrendered to good old-fashioned drunkenness. “Wookiees don’t mate with outworlders.”

“What?”

“Wookiees don’t mate with outworlders. Ever. Not even your Chewbacca would make an exception, not even for you.”

“What do you mean ‘my’, he’s not my...”

“‘Life Debt’, flyboy, look it up.” Lando leans back, eyes following the familiar crack in the ceiling panel and brain following the familiar vow to patch it up soon, before eyes close and brain begins to shut down.

—

Morning, such as it is, finds him feeling as fresh as if he’d never had a drink in his life. There’s a taste of honey on his tongue. 

“So I’ve been thinking,” says a voice behind him that leaves him remembering why it’d been such a relief to wake up feeling nothing. “I’ve been thinking that if this is gonna be my ship, she needs a proper send-off. On Corellia we break a bottle of booze of commensurate value over the ship, on Alderaan they sprinkle water from their holy spring, on Coruscant, now this is really interesting, they—“

“All right, all right,” Lando rolls over to face Han, reaching for him like they’d been lovers for years already instead of just almost sort of getting there last night. “You want to mess up my ship before you take her and leave me, I get it.”

“Do you?” Han grins, and then suddenly he’s looming above Lando, and he’s not grinning anymore. “I know what she means to you. I’ll take good care of her.”

“You’d better,” Lando gets his fists in the collar of Han’s shirt.

“I will.” Han kissed the way he flew; hectic, making it up on the spot, and better than anyone else in the galaxy.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoy my writing, I'd be thrilled if you'd take a minute to check out my original fiction. My first novel, 'Portrait of a Stranger,' is a sweet story of three chance encounters, two boys, and first love. Co-written with my fic-writing partner stardust_made, it will be released on December 26, 2018. You can order it [HERE](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KVLWHF6/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1543166018&sr=1-1&keywords=Portrait+of+a+Stranger).
> 
> The first few chapters are available to read [here on our blog](https://leboncanon.wordpress.com/). We appreciate the support of our fellow fanpeople!


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